Exploring Life & Business with Andrew Bearer of West Friends Hiking

Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Bearer.

Can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today. You can include as little or as much detail as you’d like.
The core source of inspiration on my journey to following my passion and starting a naturalist hiking company has been my personal experience and relationship with LA’s wilderness. Our hometown Santa Monica Mountains of LA hold such hidden gems of life and world-renowned natural beauty right here in our backyard. Taking the time to get to know our other neighbors, the natural world of wildlife, is where it all began for me. Once you have an experience that lights that spark of extreme awe and fascination for all the dazzling jewels of creation around us, there’s not much else that compares. I joke with kids all the time that it’s pretty much real-life Pokémon fever. In particular, I remember one of these experiences that changed my world forever. One cold day when I was about 16, a good friend of mine dragged me out for what I thought was a crazy, stupid idea to go hiking in the rain down the street from our neighborhood. Little did I know, I was about to have the surprise of a lifetime of being greeted by a group of vibrant orange and yellow-bellied salamanders, the california newts, climbing up the muddy slopes of the most intense waterfall I had ever seen. It was an experience of a lifetime, I vividly remember the feeling of wonder that completely engulfed me in that moment like it was yesterday, and it has stuck with me ever since. I was awe-struck with the idea that so much life was mysteriously existing all around me without me ever realizing or learning about it. I couldn’t wait to explore this new world as much as possible and the more I learned the more attached to it I became. One message beamed through everything I learned-that all life is interdependent and connected in so many hidden ways. I never would have considered or much less understood the reality that anything that I was doing in my everyday life could have an effect on everything around me, even the secret micro-ecosystem worlds I didn’t even know were existing right in the creeks down the street. This wild mystery world in LA’s backyard became less of a foreign place to me and started to feel more and more like an extension of home and an essential part of my life. It quickly became an inseparable part of me and I began to realize that I was equally a part of it, along with everyone else. Anyone can watch a nature show at home and hear this message of interconnectedness over and over again, as I undoubtedly did too, but there’s nothing that comes close to making the full impression of what this means than our own personal experience with our world. For me that experience just happened to be coming face to face with a vibrant, slimy and captivating little salamander neighbor of mine. It’s just a matter of perspective, and having the chance to get reminded of our connection in whatever way happens to resonate with you. It’s almost impossible for most of us to be able to recognize this today when the majority of our lives are spent completely separated from our natural environment in order to make a living and survive in our modern urban world. Basically, I had the opportunity to be reminded and realize that the natural world is the ultimate foundation that makes our lives possible, even while living on the edge of one of the biggest cities in the world. It just took one particular experience to give me that sense of wonder and emotional connection and to give me the perspective to be able to connect the dots between my backyard ecosystems and my everyday life as part of modern urban society. We’re just so unbelievably fortunate to have natural areas all around us in Los Angeles where we have the chance to be reminded of this reality, but even growing up in LA it’s often something that gets overlooked by many and is difficult to access for most people if you live in the city. A 30-60 minute drive to the closest natural area to escape the bustle of the city is a huge barrier for most people who don’t have transportation, enough free time, or the incentive of knowing that the potential for having experiences that can literally change the way you see the world and make our lives feel more meaningful is waiting for them right out there on the trail. Most people I talk to don’t have a memory of this type of personal interaction with our native biodiversity of animals and plants, and therefore don’t associate this personal emotional aspect with hiking. I consider this absence of personal experience as the main barrier of communication and emotional connection which is even more challenging to overcome than the physical ones. So it’s easy to see how both the physical distance and social/personal barriers of accessibility perpetuate the disconnection between us and our natural environments, even in a place so close to so many natural wilderness opportunities. My hope on every hike with people is to jump these hurdles by giving people the chance to make a personal connection with the experience of nature and open the door for them to take their own journey to explore our world of natural creations and what it means to them. Once that happens, no physical barrier can stand between us and our drive to connect with our world of life.

After having this firsthand encounter with our local biodiversity, I seized the opportunity to fully indulge my curiosity to explore the surreal seeming stories of the plants and animals in our local native ecosystems full of life (southern California is one of 36 global biodiversity hotspots-places with the most living species, right behind the tropical rainforests of the world). A day in the life of our backyard ecosystems is so much more intense, intricate, and delicate than we could ever imagine. It’s captivating to realize that we’re able to look inside rocks and fossils and see literally billions of years of the intelligence of life evolving that allow us to decipher the survival stories of how every living thing has learned how to adapt and thrive to its unique environment and challenges.

The curiosity that was lit by that face-to-face newt/waterfall experience quickly turned into making friendships with others who love our wildlife neighbors and native ecosystems and from there I got involved in the work that goes into taking care of these precious gems in today’s modern world. We have such a truly incredible gift of these places all around Los Angeles and California in general, but having millions of people here means that we have to be more aware of our impact more than ever. Working for the California State Parks to restore our native ecosystems introduced me to the family of conservation-minded people. It was the hardest work I’ve ever done and it was extremely difficult at times, especially for the nearly minimum wage, but it introduced me to what it means to give my time and energy to something bigger than myself. To this day that’s probably the other most critical experience I’ve had and what really sealed my personal bond with nature, conservation and the mission of giving back by leaving a positive impact on what I love and care about most. I was inspired by my bosses and fellow colleagues there to pursue a career in conservation. After some amazing years working with them, I decided to go back to school and get my degree in Wildlife Conservation and Management at Humboldt State University. Going to HSU was like a dream for me to get the chance to put my educational effort towards something that I truly loved and felt genuinely passionate about for the first time. I got to make a new friend there when a Research Wildlife Biologist for the US Forest Service who was helping teach a class I was taking took me under her wing when I expressed my enthusiasm for amphibian conservation, which is where my passion all began (newts are amphibians just like frogs). I have been lucky enough and honored to be able to work with her for the last couple years on amphibian conservation and ecological restoration projects in some of our most special habitats in California throughout the Sierra-Nevada mountains from Sequoia to Lassen and everything in between.

What stood out to me most after all these years involved in conservation field work and research is the intense need for communication with everyday people about these topics and how they relate to us in our daily lives in the city where it feels like we’re in a total separate world from the natural environment. It was so shocking and frustrating for me to see how difficult it was to get even my best friends and family to relate and understand the importance of conservation topics in our everyday lives. After all, I had no clue about any of this stuff myself until I spent years getting involved in it so I can’t blame anyone for having a hard time relating and “connecting the dots.” This realization is what sparked me to take up the challenge of figuring out a way to communicate with people about these topics in the same style that inspired me in the first place- simply getting out on the trail with others and making personal connections through the curiosity that we all share. I firmly believe that connections between us as friends and connections between us as part of the collective natural world of life are both equally important and essentially linked to our chance of creating a balanced, healthy world. Making new friends and relationships formed through the shared passion of the love and wonder of life and our natural world is the most powerful and meaningful experience I’ve had. The support and encouragement I’ve gotten from people is the most amazing thing I could’ve ever dreamed of and the feeling of being able to make a meaningful contribution to people’s lives and to our greatest current challenge of living in balance with our world for a positive future means everything to me. My family and friends, especially my best friend Kyle, have been an absolutely essential aspect of creating the conservation-focused hiking business that we recently started.

Has it been a smooth road? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I’ve been on a winding path that has taken me in some completely opposite directions to get to where I’m at today which has brought some welcome surprises and painful challenges. An overarching challenge of my personal journey is that there’s a paradox involved in making your life about something that is so intimately personal and part of your core being. It feels more fulfilling than anything to work for something you’re passionate about but you also never get to walk away and take a break once you get too deep, which can quickly become entirely overwhelming. Conservation is such an overarching topic since it concerns all life on earth. I got into it because of my love of nature, but once you’re in on a fundamental level, it sprawls into every crevice of your life. From this perspective it becomes clear that every decision we make is a personal statement to the world about the kind of world we want to live in and leave for our kids. Nobody is free from this responsibility, the only difference is if we choose to recognize this responsibility or not. From the food we eat, to the products we buy and the people and ideas that are behind them. This outlook places a responsibility on each of us individually and has caused me to put a sometimes unmanageable amount of pressure on myself to be making decisions I can feel good about, especially when it comes to what I’m putting my life effort and energy towards. I can only imagine what raising a child is like and that any parents out there are rolling their eyes with quivering smiles of joy and frustration reading this. It’s the most amazing feeling to be part of something that truly means most to you, but equally as difficult to deal with the pressure and failures when devoting your full heart and soul into something.

From my earliest memories I had both an immense amount of love from my family and a very real sense of anxiety and unsettledness because my parents separated before I could ever remember the feeling of having a complete core family unit. Don’t get me wrong, I feel so lucky to have such an amazing family and they are what has made everything possible for me, but I definitely experienced some lasting emotional trauma after my Mom and Dad separated and we lost that essential positive relationship between our family during my childhood. Decades later, things are much more positive as far as our family dynamic and I like to think our shared love for nature has been a big part of that in ways we probably don’t even fully realize yet. I can’t be absolutely certain, but reflecting back on it now it seems I was drawn to nature by the idea of seeking somewhere to take refuge from my subconscious burden of anxiety and emotional distress, and I’m definitely not the only one who’s had this same personal journey into nature. Funny enough, writing this now and stirring up those old memories gave me a distinct memory of how I loved a picture book I saw in elementary school about a kid building a castle floating in the sky to run away from the rest of the world and disappear. I don’t mean to sound like I was antisocial or depressed, I was a happy kid and had an amazing family and group of best friends that were my life like any typical kid but I was very reserved and shy and didn’t want much to do with most people if I didn’t have to deal with them. I think I’ve always carried a lot of anxiety with me that I’ve never been fully conscious of or formally addressed. I was pretty closed off to trying new things and very defensive. I really believe that finding this unimaginably fascinating new world of nature all around me was the most amazing thing that ever happened to me, like a dream come true of finding my own castle in the sky that just took such a weight off of me from my underlying personal anxiety. Anything that has the power to take you out of your normal habitual routine of thoughts and feelings can be the gateway to a new outlook. I really believe I was drawn to nature as an escape from my regular world of heavy feelings that I carried with me and all of the typical challenges that most kids go through growing up. It gave me everything I needed and more than I could ever imagine.

Reflecting back from where I am today, what I find interesting about my challenge of dealing with my early emotional struggle that had such an impact on my personal development is how this path has taken me on a complete u-turn from seeking my own personal refuge all to myself to going directly back into the very heart of the social world on a deeper level than I ever would have imagined. I was such a shy kid, I would barely talk to most people until I was a teenager, so it’s crazy for me to think of how I ever got to a place of deciding to make my life about sharing my most intimately personal cares and thoughts with complete strangers. Finding a role for yourself in life that feels meaningful and like it’s meant to be is difficult enough in itself, especially when it means facing your fears to become something that you never would have thought you could be or even wanted to be. I definitely never thought I was someone who would be brave enough to put myself in such a vulnerable situation as opening up the deepest parts of my life to others as my job, but here I am. After I fell in love with the experience of exploring the mysteries of the natural world and its ingenious, intricately woven ecosystems of life there was nothing else that felt more natural to devote my life to. Then, after becoming increasingly aware of the reality of the intense peril that our natural environments are facing there was simply no turning back from the mission of doing whatever I can to protect and promote it. Now I just had the challenge of figuring out what I could do to make the most positive impact I possibly could. Little did I know the answer was staring me in the face all along, I just needed to go back to the source- sharing the experience of nature with others like I was so lucky to have it shared with me by so many people in my life.

I got introduced to the world of conservation work in 2011 at the California State Parks here in LA at Malibu Creek State Park after meeting one of my best friends in the world through our shared passion for exploring our hometown Santa Monica Mountains. Fast forward through a decade of work experience in the field with State, Federal and local non-profit agencies and a BS degree in Wildlife Management & Conservation at Humboldt State University, and one thing was glaringly crystal clear: communication is the missing key. My experience in conservation field work and research has given me my most precious memories and made me who I am today along with all the friends and mentors I’ve gotten to meet along the way, but there was a hard reality check at the end of this ride. The reality is the scientific community (including conservationists) is extremely cryptic and inaccessible to the general public. Based on my experience I firmly believe that the characteristic antisocial attitude of the classic scientist character archetype that defines a great deal of self-righteous people involved in scientific work is largely responsible for building a self-imposed barrier to relatability from their peers on the outside, the everyday people like you and me that will ultimately make or break the success of conservation and the chances at a peaceful future on our planet. If someone acts like you’re intellectually inferior to them and therefore insignificant, then what would you expect them to think of you and whatever ideas you want them to understand? When it comes to conservation in particular, this is tragically ironic for people doing work that is aimed at sustaining life on our planet for the greater good. In fact, I don’t think Shakespeare could write a satire more painfully embarrassing and paradoxic of human nature. Not to mention the clear fact that the support and involvement of the masses is the only way to meaningful progress towards the ultimate goal of survival of us and life on our planet that is the very definition of conservation science. Based on my experience, there’s no doubt in my mind that this self-crippling arrogance from within the science community is so prevalent that it has helped give rise to the extreme skepticism and repugnance from the general public that has created the fundamental war on science that exists in our society today.

After all that time working and going to school and feeling like I was part of making a positive difference, only to return home to furrowed eyebrow responses and unsatisfying conversations with family and friends trying to relate the significance of the work I was doing with others, I was left feeling more lost than ever and ready to throw in the towel on my lofty dreams of conservation. I had worked years of dirty, dangerous jobs for meager pay with no benefits or stability that I couldn’t even survive on without supplemental side-gigs, spent thousands of dollars and years in school, and felt as far from meaningful progress towards conservation as ever after experiencing the complete communication breakdown between the public and the science/conservation communities I had joined and looked up to. And I’m not the only one who has realized this, you don’t have to look any further than the most world-renowned professional Naturalist there is, Sir David Attenborough, to hear the echo of the consensus that communication itself is the greatest challenge to conservation and, ultimately, to our survival. So, I decided to take things into my own hands. I had a serious period of reflection on my life’s motivations after deciding to take a job that was farthest from my original goals back here in the big city, the place where I thought I would never return, but it paid double what I ever made in conservation, of course. Above all, I had always wanted to spend as much of my time as possible being outside in contact with the natural world that I love. Luckily my passion for all things nature was unshaken, as always, and I thought about what my friends and family had always said they loved about me; my excitement for life, exploration and most of all, sharing it with others. It was such a daunting task to think of packaging up my most precious feelings and thoughts in a way that I could share them with complete strangers, but my back was against the wall. I had to figure something out, or submit to what felt like an empty life of leaving behind everything that I live for just to take care of myself, while sadly reducing my feeling of responsibility to give back to nature, the source that had given me everything, to nothing more than a mere side hobby interest. After all, could opening up my deepest passions and cares with complete strangers by getting people to come share a hiking experience with me be worse than sitting in an office for the rest of my life doing things that mean nothing to me other than a paycheck? Hell no. Luckily I faced my fears and took the plunge, but not without the support and encouragement of my dearest family and friends I’ve made along the way holding me up and pushing me forward through it all. The experiences I’ve gotten to share with others and the responses they’ve shared with me and friendships we’ve made are as dear to my heart as anything I’ve ever felt in my life so far. I’m positively certain this is a critical part of my journey to fulfilling my responsibility to what I love by giving back to the source of my personal peace and happiness. In the game of life, I truly believe it all comes full circle. Hopefully I can contribute to fulfilling the cycle and filling my role as part of the chain of interconnectedness that brings us all together to create the peace and happiness that we all hope for our kids and for our future.

Please tell us more about your business or organization. What should we know? What do you do, what do you specialize in / what are you known for? What sets you apart from others? What are you most proud brand wise? What do you want our readers to know about your brand, offerings, services, etc?
Everything about what I’m doing with our West Friends hiking company revolves around giving back to what has given me the most happiness and peace in my life. There’s no substitute for our own personal experiences when it comes to what we care about, and my experience with nature is why it means more than anything to me. My hiking business is simply about sharing the opportunity to have the most meaningful nature experiences possible, just like the opportunity I was given by all the people that have shared these experiences with me. That’s why I developed my own naturalist program to share the most unforgettable and awe-inspiring beauty that exists in Los Angeles and engage people with the vibrant stories of LA’s ecological and cultural history that are the root of it all. To make this as special as possible I have curated guided hiking itineraries for specific trails that allow people to take adventures of their own to explore and witness the living, breathing versions of these stories that are unfolding every second all around us and to engage themselves with these intricate themes in the most personal, firsthand context possible. I have learned a lot in my first year and a half leading guided hikes and have refined my communication techniques to provide the most personalized interaction which is focused on adapting my naturalist content to the unique interests of individuals to allow the information to be as accessible, relevant and impactful as possible. My personal experience and insight is unique because I’m not just your average weekend hiker. The guided hikes I lead are based on my lifelong personal passion and connection with my local area, a Wildlife Management & Conservation degree, and most of all, a decade of both professional and volunteer conservation work experience spanning from the Sierra-Nevada mountains to Malibu with both State and Federal government agencies. I’m not aware of any other guided hiking service that delivers the personalized style and level of detail and expertise on ecological and cultural/social themes that I provide, which is why I developed my own program and made my own company along with my best friend Kyle. A unique aspect of my program is that much of the content I provide simply can’t be found in easily accessible sources, and in most cases not at all, because it’s personal insight from my diverse experiences. I don’t hold back about confronting the deep and complex issues that shape how we value and engage with our precious natural environment today and I strive to share the lesser-known cultural history of the interaction between indigenous cultures and the first European/American immigrants that is withheld from most history books and California public education curriculums. The content I share stems from my personal curiosity about my hometown’s past and concerns about the future of this area and the qualities I value most about it that have shaped my life. I have learned firsthand from my hiking guests that modern explorers are seeking an enhanced level of understanding and relatability to our world that requires a more personalized experience than most established naturalist guide programs that have been recycling outdated perspectives and information for decades.

Above all, my priority is contributing to the goal of conservation by addressing the biggest challenge involved which is communication. That’s exactly why my naturalist program emphasizes engaging with each other about pertinent topics that enable people to draw their own conclusions and perspectives based on their own personal critical analysis of the information. To be clear, I don’t teach ideas or opinions, but rather I seek to give people knowledge that empowers them with the ability to reflect on and interpret the stories and concepts I share to draw their own conclusions. Most of all, I hope to share the opportunity for others to feel a deeper sense of relation with our local natural heritage through the process of interaction and personal reflection. I judge my success by my clients’ statements about our personal interaction and their level of understanding and consideration of the main topics discussed, which can be referenced in dozens of customer reviews. My mission is to make as many positive relationships with people as I can through connecting about what we love, and share the opportunity for them to create and strengthen their own relationships with our world as much as possible. In the name of conservation of life: cheers to nature, curiosity and caring about our home!

Pricing:

• Kids 14 and under are 1/2 price. Discounts for groups of 3 or more
• 2.5 hour naturalist hike: $65/person
• 4 hour naturalist hike: $100/person

Contact Info:

• Email: hiking@westfriends.org
• Website: www.westfriends.org
• Instagram: @west_friends_hiking
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WestFriendsHiking
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUXwMI9XTiMOST_8ofJhT7g
• Other: www.andrewbearer.com

Image Credits:
Andrew Bearer